up on the rooftop
by takingoffmyshoes
Summary: it's a cold, wet night to be stuck hiding in plain sight.


_written for canardroublard as part of the TMFU winter gift exchange over on ao3_

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"Gaby," he says, his voice low, soft with what she now knows to be earnestness.

How long it had taken to stop associating that smooth depth with artifice; how long it had taken to realize that someone skilled at lying might not always be a liar, and how much longer still to understand that, unlikely as it may seem, he counts her as someone worthy of his honesty.

Not for the first time, she reminds herself that for all her assumptions, he's never actually lied to her. Not about anything important.

Still, she doesn't take kindly to anyone's sympathy, his least of all.

"What?" she snaps, hunching further into her coat – _coats_, Solo's bunched awkwardly around her own – and trying to cram more of her arms into the deep pockets. Her footsteps seem to echo unnaturally in the dark, but despite her height her strides are long and purposeful, and despite her shivering and her half-aching, half-numb feet the distance between her and her goal is steadily lessening.

"Are you all right?" Solo asks patiently, still in that quiet, earnest tone. He's never ruffled by her rudeness, and she's not sure which of them that says the most about: Solo, that his mask is still so firmly in place, or her, that she keeps trying to break through it anyway.

"I'm fine," she says shortly. "Keep up."

As if there's any chance of him not. Even in her cold-fueled efficiency, he could outpace her without expending any real effort.

_Just like everything else,_ she thinks sourly. Napoleon Solo, charmer and thief, never has to _work_ for anything, never finds anything _difficult_, never needs _help_— she misses the step up onto the sidewalk and her gait hitches sharply, but before she can do more than stumble Solo steadies her with a firm hand on her elbow.

She snatches her arm back, tucking it in against her side, and pays closer attention to her path. The pavement is uneven in spots – not cracked and crumbling the way she'd grown used to in East Berlin, not gouged with surface-level reminders of war and brutality, not a threat to unwary walkers – and it's taking more of her concentration to keep her steps sure and her eyes ahead.

She's so tired, and so cold, and she just wants today to be _done_. But it's not yet, and it won't be for a long time.

"Here," Solo says, with another light touch, this time to her shoulder. "There's a shortcut."

She huffs. "Of course there is." He leads her without seeming to, never really stepping in front of her but not quite touching her, either. She doesn't need to remind herself to trust him this time, and simply follows – mute, shivering, and unquestioning. The shortcut doesn't seem to be all that short, but it gets them to the side door of their hotel; Solo has it open in a matter of seconds, despite the deadbolt she knows is connected to the main lock. He must have blocked it, somehow, when he left, to keep it from sliding into place.

He holds it for her to go through, then follows closely behind as she begins the trek up the service stairs. Muscle memory is something that comes quickly to her, after years first of dancing then of working with mechanics, so despite her leaden exhaustion her legs lift faithfully and she finds one step after another until they're at their floor, then somehow Solo is ahead of her again and opening the access door.

The stairwell had seemed a welcome respite from the cold and damp of the outdoors, but once she's in the main building, with its carpeted floor and evenly-spaced wall sconces and quietly clunking radiators, she realises what a scant improvement it had been. The hotel is about as far from 'chic' as the grungy little flat that Solo had brought her to that first night – the carpet has seen better years, the lights in the sconces flicker and buzz sporadically, and experience has proven the radiators to be temperamental at best and malicious at worse – but to her cold-fogged mind, it's nothing short of heavenly.

Even in the warmth, she's reluctant to part with either of the coats, and Solo makes no move to take his own back, so they stay firmly bundled around her as they head wordlessly down the hall and around the corner. Solo once more appears just far enough in front of her to open the door to their room in time for her to pass through without pausing.

"The heating's on the fritz again," he says as he closes and locks the door behind them, voice resounding oddly in the dingy space. "But I can draw you a bath, if you like, and we still have some of that wine." The two narrow beds are shoved so far into opposite corners of the right-hand wall as to be nearly impossible to make, and the one against the outer wall is scant inches from the window. It's this one that she heads for automatically, then stops. Instead of her own small suitcase, it's Solo's that's propped up against the end, and his book lying carelessly on the covers. She blinks, but before she can dredge up the words to ask, Solo answers her unspoken question.

"I hope you don't mind that I switched them," he says, peeling off his suit jacket with a sad squelching noise. "That window's a heat sink, especially with the radiator sleeping on the job."

Some of the fondness she's been ruthlessly repressing for the past few hours floats to the surface, and some of her stiffness slumps away. "You hate being next to windows," she reminds him, a kernel of warmth in the words.

"You will too, in a few more years," he points out mildly, "but it's a small enough risk here, I think."

He hadn't actually asked her to take that one; she'd just claimed it out of habit, knowing of his wariness, and knowing also that if forced to ask, he wouldn't, just as he knows that she wouldn't have asked to trade tonight.

"If it weren't nailed down, I would've just moved it," Solo goes on, and gives the offending metal frame a light kick. It hums discontentedly, and he turns back to her. "So. Bath? Wine? Both?"

Her tentatively lifting spirits plummet again. "Neither," she says, and starts wrestling her way out of the coats. "Don't we have anything stronger?"

"If we did, I wouldn't give you any."

She rounds on him, though the effect is undoubtedly dulled by her jerky, uncoordinated efforts. "I don't need you to _give_ me _anything_," she snaps. "I don't need your _permission_, or your _approval_, or your _help_." She spits the last word as the coats come free, stuck to one another with the dampness of the wool, and they fall to the floor with a wet plop.

"Strong alcohol isn't a recommended treatment for hypothermia," Solo tells her with that damnable calm of his. "I could also make tea, if you like."

"I don't _have_ hypothermia," Gaby retorts. "I'm cold and I'm wet but I can _deal_ with it, so if you want to be useful, go and get me a towel, then go and be somewhere else."

"Gaby," he starts, but she cuts him off with a snarl.

"_Go!"_

He dips his head with infuriating good grace, and fetches her a towel from the bathroom. She snatches it out of his hands, then turns her back pointedly and starts stripping off the rest of her clammy, clinging clothing.

His footsteps fade slightly, then the door opens and shuts as quietly as its rough hinges will allow.

Her hands aren't shaking anymore, which may not be a good thing, but it makes controlling her stiff fingers a little easier. Her fingertips and palms are red and raw from her scrabbling on the harsh roofing tile, and the color is all the more striking for the pale deadness of the rest of the skin. They sting a bit, but that too has been dampened by the cold, and she's not about to wait for the feeling to come back.

Sweater, shirt, shoes, socks, trousers, and thick stockings all join the coats on the floor. She leaves them where they are, and takes a step away to avoid the spreading sogginess around them. She'd been dressed for the weather, yes, but only for an hour of it. If she'd known that she would be spending almost _four_ hours spread-eagled on a steep roof, clinging desperately to the wet sandpaper-like tiles, slowly soaked through by the misting rain, she would have brought a pair of welding gloves and a parka.

But she's alive, so life goes on, as Solo is so fond of saying. And she may be cold and wet and exhausted, but as she herself had said, she can deal with it.

She dries herself quickly, roughly, uncaring of the spots of blood that dot the thin white terry cloth where she grips it, and wrings her hair out with it when she's done. The towel goes onto the sodden pile, too, just as wet as the rest of it, and although she still doesn't feel _dry_, she's dri_er_, and that's enough for now.

The boiling fury seems to have been wrung and rubbed from her as well; there's still a small spark of resentment, but it's been almost entirely doused by the draining emptiness of exhaustion.

Feeling twice her age, she pulls on her pajamas, grateful for the thick flannel and long legs and sleeves, then digs through Solo's suitcase for his thickest pair of socks and warmest sweater and puts those on as well, a bit more careful than she had been with the towel. Her hands don't seem to be bleeding anymore – the blood that had come off on the towels was old and dried – but they probably warrant a closer look, so she sinks onto the bed and holds them out to the sickly yellow light cast by the small lamp on the bedside table. Maybe it's the timing, and the relative warmth of the room restoring the feeling, or maybe it's just the effect of actually looking at them, but the longer she stares at the shredded skin, cross-hatched with deeper scores of red, the more her palms and fingertips throb.

It was like this with dancing, too: no matter how badly her feet hurt after a practice or performance, she couldn't look at them until she'd gotten home, or it would be impossible to make them carry her those final steps. Something about seeing the injuries makes them real, and however shallow or superficial they appear, the stinging ache of raw skin never gets easier to ignore.

She doesn't know how long she sits there, watching her pulse pound in her palms – there's no clock in the room, no watch on her wrist to measure out the seconds with quiet ticking – but when the door creaks open and measured footsteps approach, she realises vaguely that she'd never gotten around to doing anything with them.

There's a scrape and a rattle as Solo pushes the lamp back on the rickety table to make room for a laden tray, then his warm hands wrap gently around her wrists to pull her hands closer to the light.

"Those look painful," he says softly. "Anything I can do?"

She looks up at him, and sees nothing but honest inquiry in his eyes. That spark of resentment stirs in her chest, then goes out, unable to sustain itself. She looks away, ashamed but too tired to care all that much.

"Sorry I snapped at you," she mutters, and Solo squeezes her wrists slightly in answer, then lowers them back to her lap.

"Already forgotten," he promises. "I'll be right back."

He comes back with another towel from the bathroom and a glass of water. Gaby just watches as he kneels in front of her, rolls up her sleeves, and places the towel in her lap, but her eyes drift shut as he dips a corner into the water and starts cleaning the scrapes. It's not that she _can't_ watch, just that she's tired, and the deep stinging ache of touch against exposed nerves is oddly soporific when she's not the one inflicting it.

The throbbing lingers long after he's done, so she almost doesn't notice him stand and step away. She opens her eyes to see him returning a handful of seconds later with a roll of gauze, and gazes blankly at the floor behind him while he wraps each of her palms in two loose layers.

"Not much to do for the fingertips," he says when he's done. "Just keep them clean, and keep an eye out for any infection around the nails."

"Thank you," she says, assuming he's done, and carefully pulls her hands away from his. He lets her, but he doesn't draw back. He drops his hands to her knees and leans ever so slightly closer.

"Gaby," he says, his voice that peculiar blend of need and command that always gets through to her whether or not she wants to be reached, and she looks up. For the second time that night (only the second), she meets his gaze directly. His eyes are so blue, and his usual mask of perfect insouciance is nowhere to be seen. He looks tired, and worried, and maybe even a little bit stressed; this mission has been difficult and frustrating from the start, and tonight was only the most recent in a long string of setbacks.

And maybe it hadn't been her fault, but it _had_ been her responsibility, and she'd been badly outmaneuvered. Accidentally, perhaps, and through no real failing of her own, but still.

"Talk to me?" he says, only just over the line between order and request.

"I'm fine," she tells him.

He smiles, just a bit. "I know. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about."

She sighs. "Do I have to?"

"Of course not," he assures her, but that false placidity is already seeping back into his features. Gone is the worry, the care, the open concern, hidden again by the unrumpled amicability he so carefully cultivates.

"It's just— I'm tired," she explains, but knows it's a weak argument. They're _both_ tired. They're _always_ tired. But it's their job to push through it, and so they do. She just can't find the will to, not for this, not tonight. Not with her stinging hands and still-cold feet, not with the aching stiffness in her muscles and the icy touch of her own hair on the back of her neck. Not with the embarrassment of her undignified retreat and the miserable, interminable wait on the roof still sitting so heavily in her mind. If she has to sit here before a sympathetic audience and spill all the dejected resignation of the past several hours, she may spill more than words.

If she talks about it, she might cry. And her dignity is already as tattered as her hands, so she can't force herself to risk it further. Not even for him. Perhaps _especially_ not for him.

She can guess where and how Solo learned to box up his hurts and tuck them away, but she can't deny that it's useful, and she can't deny that sometimes (just sometimes) she wishes she could do the same. She tries, but even her most self-destructive tendencies don't run that deep, and her acting abilities aren't as well trained. It seems the least she can do, then, not to make him watch her unravel over ungained information and uncomfortable perches.

"In the morning," she promises, watching his eyes for signs of himself. "We'll get coffee and laugh at my mistakes and come up with a plan to try again." She rests her hands over his and presses them slightly. "I just want today to be over," she finishes. "Can it be over?"

He softens, his smile once more becoming genuine. "Soon," he promises. "But first, I have a pot of Darjeeling that should be just about steeped."

He pours them each a cup from the pot on the tray he'd brought up, and though the bandages around her palms mean she needs to pay a bit more attention to holding it than usual, the cheap ceramic suffuses a solid, grounding warmth through the gauze and into her skin. She pulls in a deep breath of the steam curling from the surface and sighs.

"I'm not really a tea person, you know."

"I know," Solo says simply.

"But this is very nice."

"I know," he says again.

Gaby rolls her eyes at his poorly disguised smirk and lifts her cup. Life may be all too easy and effortless for him, but it's nice to reap the benefits of that now and again.

Perhaps she won't make him sleep in the bed by the window, after all.

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_thank you for reading! as always, please feel free to leave whatever feedback you'd like to._


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